Paths They Choose
by CyrusBreeze
Summary: "Heroes are made by the paths they choose, not the powers they are graced with." -Brodi Ashton Or The one where Natasha has a secret family that very few people truly know about.


Her watch is the first clue that she's in trouble. She's about to feed the horses when the alarm beeps loudly and vibrations jolt her wrist.

She looks at the tiny screen. SECURITY BREACH. SECURITY BREACH. SECURITY BREACH. The words flow continuously across the screen in bold print.

Aleksandra curses, drops the bucket of horse feed, and sprints toward the house.

She fumbles with the electronic keypad to enter the house, but the second time that she enters her code, the door opens.

Her brother is sitting in the living room, eyes alert. He looks alternatively between the tablet in his lap and the door.

Mikhail looks at Aleksandra and then he explains, "The sensors outside say that it's coming from the north, about 150 feet in the air," He hands the tablet to his sister.

"It's a quinjet," she says, scrolling through the lines of code. "And it's preparing to land." Aleksandra pauses, taking a quick moment to process the information. " Go into the basement, lock the door, and do not come up unless I tell you to."

Misha nods. "If I'm not there within seven minutes, then I want you to text mom, Anne, and Bubbles and let them know what going on."

"Okay," Misha says. He grabs his crutches and stands up.

Aleksandra opens the entertainment center and grabs her taser.

"If anyone comes down the stairs and tries to attack you, shoot them with this." Aleksandra presses the stun gun into her brother's hand.

"Is this real?" Misha asks, and it's then that Aleksandra hears the sheer terror in Misha's voice.

"It's a stun gun," Aleksandra explains.

Misha nods again and then turns and heads toward the basement. The basement door closes behind Misha and Aleksandra allows herself a tiny moment of panic. She's terrified because a security breach has never actually happened and even though she knows what to do, she isn't sure she wants to do it.

She distracts herself by running the specs of the operation. Worse case scenario, there's a dozen people on the Quinjet and she has to hide a dozen bodies (and get blood off the carpet) before her mom or Oma get home.

She grabs a taser and a knife from behind the false back of the entertainment center and then she looks out the window again. The quinjet has landed Aleksandra's breath hitches as she focuses her gaze on the place where the door will open.

The quinjet doors open and Aleksandra just stares. Her mom, followed by her uncle Clint the rest of the Avengers (the Avengers!) is stepping out of the Quinjet

Aleksandra breathes a sigh of relief before she steadies herself and then walks to the door of the basement.

"Misha," she shouts as she opens the basement door. "Mom's home."

-X-

The Quinjet lands in a grassy field a little ways away from what looks to be a picturesque farmhouse. It's a white house with green shutters, a wrap around porch, and a white picket fence.

It seems like an abnormal place for a safe house, but Bruce feels thoroughly exhausted and filthy and he doesn't care where he is as long as he gets to shower and rest safely.

Natasha shuts off the engine of the Quinjet, and Steve opens the door. The team climbs out of the Quinjet and they begin the trek towards the house.

They pass a small field of soybeans and it narrows down the possibility of where they are to a portion of the Midwest. He can't really tell anything asks from his surroundings, but he's almost positive that they're somewhere in Iowa, Indiana, or one of the Dakotas.

They climb up the steps of the porch and Natasha presses several buttons on a keypad. The door clicks unlocked and then Natasha steps into the house.

Bruce follows the group into the house.

"Aleksandra," Natasha calls out.

There's a pause, and then Natasha is nearly tackled by a small figure.

"Hey, мышь," Natasha says.

And it takes a moment for Bruce to realize that Natasha is holding a child.

"Mommy," says the child, wrapping his arms around Natasha.

There's a teenager as well, and she hugs Natasha.

"Gentlemen," Natasha says after a moment. "These are my kids Aleksandra and Mikhail." She gently sets the youngest down and he grabs a pair of crutches from the side of the couch.

"We would've called ahead," Tony says. "But we were too busy having no idea you existed.

There's a long pause and then a piece of toastbr /

pops up from the toaster and Thor looks at the ground and suddenly he's leaving and Steve is following.

"So," the oldest one says after an extended pause. "Anybody want some breakfast?"

-X-

Clint and Natasha are both standing on the deck, just outside the door to the kitchen. Aleksandra is cooking breakfast and has shooed everyone out.

Clint is sipping bottled water and checking his phone every four seconds. It's after the nineteenth time that Natasha loses patience.

"You know," she says, taking a long swig of her own bottle of water. "You can go check on her; we're going to be here for at least a few hours."

Clint nods. Laura is nearly thirty weeks pregnant, and she's supposed to be on modified bedrest, but Laura is stubborn. When Clint isn't around, she'll do for herself what needs to be done.

Clint sighs. "I'm leaving," he finally says.

-X-

The team sits at the kitchen table. Tony looks half dead as he drains his fourth cup of coffee. Steve eats quickly, and if the look on his face is anything to go by, he's internally trying to figure out the logistics of the situation and the team's next move. Natasha does something on her phone, but Bruce isn't sure what. Clint is gone, he left shortly after he and Natasha went outside the house. Bruce quietly observes as he eats.

Natasha's kids, and it feels weird to say that, are both at the table. The oldest is seated with a plate of pizza rolls, odd for eight thirty in the morning, but Bruce has eaten weirder things at weirder hours so he can't really judge.

He can't get over how Aleksandra looks just like Natasha, from her hair to her stature to her face shape. Bruce would have assumed that Aleksandra was a clone - not entirely unlikely given what he knows about the Red Room - had he not caught a glimpse of Aleksandra's eyes, which are blue-grey instead of Natasha's green.

The youngest is playing something on a StarkPad. Bruce doesn't know much -or anything really- about pop culture but it looks to be the video game Minecraft.

His hair is dark and it almost reaches his shoulders. His eyes, however, are the same color as Natasha's.

The entire situation is shocking to Bruce. He knew that Natasha was an incredibly private person, but he had no idea that she was hiding something this big.

It's an entirely new side of Natasha, one that opens up an entirely different perspective. It shows the motivation behind so many of her actions.

"Is there anything I could do to help?" Steve asks, interrupting Bruce's train of thought.

"You don't have to help," Aleksandra says. "You can sit on the couch and chill if you want."

"I'm afraid I have a bit too much energy for that, ma'am," Steve says.

She smirks at being called ma'am. "If you insist, there is some wood outside that needs to be chopped in half."

"Aleksandra," Natasha says.

"What?" Aleksandra says. "He asked. There's supposed to be severe weather sometime tonight," she adds. "So we have to get all the wood in the shed before then."

"Severe weather?" Tony questions, draining his cup of coffee. He walks over to the coffee pot and pours himself another mug.

"Yes," Aleksandra says. "Probably a thunderstorm or some hail or something, possibly a tornado, but the radar was looking pretty good when I checked it earlier."

"A tornado?" Tony asks, jolting and spilling droplets of coffee on his shirt.

"Yes, Stark," Natasha says with a smile. "A tornado. Although from what I'm seeing on the weather radar, the worst we're going to be dealing is some heavy rain, and even then, it's probably going to end up changing."

"Welcome to the Midwest," Aleksandra says. "Where the weather is made up, and the forecast doesn't matter."

"Where are we exactly?" Tony asks.

"Just outside of Ames, Iowa," Natasha says.

"Oh," Tony says. "That must be why the air smells like pig crap."

Aleksandra manages to level out a glare at Tony that exactly mirrors one that Natasha might use.

Tony raises his eyebrows and finishes his cup of coffee. "Steve," he says. "You wanna go cut the wood or something? You know, before mini widow decides to kill me or something."

Steve sighs and chuckles, and he follows Tony outside of the door.

"Well then," Aleksandra says after a moment. "My door is broken. So, mom, do you want to come take a look at it?"?

"What happened?" Natasha asks.

"Aleksandra broke it," Mikhail pipes up.

"Really, dude?" Aleksandra responds. "You weren't supposed to tell. At least my room is clean."

Mikhail sticks his tongue out at Aleksandra, and then Aleksandra turns and heads out the door.

Natasha sighs and follows.

-X-

"You're good at biochemistry, right?" Mikhail asks.

Bruce nods.

"So, is this correct?" Mikhail hands Bruce his StarkPad.

Bruce stares at the notebook and then glances at the equation on the screen.

The equation is drawn out meticulously. "Wow," Bruce says. "This is impressive. I wasn't able to do this until my senior year of high school."

Mikhail shrugs. "My mom says it's because bad people did something to my brain before I was born."

"Is that why you're..." Bruce trails off.

"No," Mikhail says. "I have Larsen Syndrome. It's completely unrelated, but for the record, a lot of people don't like it when people ask them why they're disabled."

"I'm sorry," Bruce feels his face go hot. "I forget that people are more easily offended than atoms."

Mikhail shrugs. "I don't mind," he says. "I actually like to talk about it, but it can be construed as rude or invasive, especially if the person is a stranger."

There's a pause and then Bruce glances down at Mikhail's StarkPad and says, "This is actually very well worked out, but you are missing some atoms here."

"I'm sorry," Mikhail says. "Could you repeat that?" He gestures to his ear, and Bruce can see a black hearing aid.

"You're missing some atoms," Bruce repeats, raising his voice a little bit not shouting.

Mikhail chuckles. "That happens when you use Minecraft as your primary mode for diagramming."

"Minecraft?" Bruce asks. He doesn't know much about the video game, but he's almost positive that Minecraft doesn't involve science.

"Yah," Mikhail says. "You can use it to build molecules, and it makes things easier because you're able to actually view the molecules. Plus, I'm pretty terrible at drawing them."

"Well," Bruce says. "This is really well done, and it's definitely pretty awesome for using a program designed for, what is Minecraft designed for?."

"Gaming, pretty much," Mikhail says. "You can use it for physics and stuff, but not a lot of people do."

"Well, then," Bruce says. "Nice job."

"Thank you," Mikhail says.

"So," Bruce says, mainly because he's curious more than attempting to continue the conversation. "When your mom is gone, do you just stay with your sister?"

"No," Mikhail says. "My grandma usually watches us, although she's not technically my grandma because we're not related by blood. But she had to go to SHIELD because they needed hackers to help out with the Ultron situation. She's supposed to come back tomorrow morning or something."

Bruce nods.

Mikhail sighs. "I should probably go clean my room," he says.

And he leaves the kitchen, leaning Bruce alone with his thoughts.

-X-

Natasha treads down the hallway with a stack of fluffy towels in her arms. Most of the team has been trading off on the shower, and she doesn't quite have enough towels for everyone. She stops at the guest room door and knocks.

"One minute," she hears Bruce say, and then there are the various sounds associated with getting dressed and something that sounds vaguely like a crash.

A moment later, Bruce opens the door, looking sheepish. "Sorry," he says.

And he's dressed (albeit shirtless), changed and looking mostly dry.

"Figured you needed a towel. Guess I was wrong," Natasha steps into the guest bedroom.

Bruce smiles. "This one seemed clean enough," he gestures with the towel in his hand. . "Um, I used up all the hot water, though."

"It's fine," Natasha says with a small smile. "I already took my shower, and my kids do it all the time anyway. I should really get a second water heater."

"You know," Bruce says thoughtfully. "I always thought, that if anyone had a secret kid, it's be Tony. Granted, he wouldn't know about said kid, but still."

"Well, we all have our secrets," Natasha says.

"Some more visible than others," Bruce pauses. "The world just saw the Hulk, the real Hulk, for the first time. And from what I've heard since then, they don't want him on the team. He's a murderer. He killed people."

"My body count was one hundred-thirty-seven," Natasha says quietly.

"What?" Bruce asks, brows furrowing with question.

"The number of people I killed before I was brought into SHIELD," she pauses and takes a step closer to Bruce before she continues. "Eleven of them were minors. Four of them were the closest thing I had to friends." Natasha takes a long, slow breath. "What happened wasn't your fault, but those deaths, those murders. They're on me."

"Natasha, that's different," Bruce says. "The Other Guy is, he's. You don't," Bruce stuttersbr /

"I understand perfectly," Natasha places the towels on the bed before she continues. "The Red Room wanted an army, and they were willing to use any means to obtain one," Natasha draws in a long breath, forcing herself to remain composed.

"They artificially inseminated the girls, us girls. Aleksandra's older now than I was when I had were clever. They let me love her and then used her as collateral. With a gun to your child's head everything is easier... even killing. And I let it happen. I let my daughter be turned into a weapon. I let them train her and starve her and beat her and I did nothing. I allowed them to use my five year old as an instrument in murder, and I probably would've let them kill my son. You still think you're the only monster on the team?"

"You're being hard on yourself," Bruce begins.

"Here I was hoping that was your job," Natasha says before Bruce can continue.

Bruce takes another step towards Natasha and says, "Natasha, you were young, and you did what anybody would've."

"You know," Natasha says quietly. "Clint tells me that a lot. I don't know if I believe it."

Natasha steps closer, and they're in close proximity, close enough that Bruce reaches out impulsively and grabs Natasha's hand.

"Natasha," he says, tracing a thumb in her hand comfortingly. "You managed to keep your children alive in a very difficult situation. You had no control over what happened."

"Control," Natasha says, slowly intertwining her fingers with Bruce's. "That seems to be the word of the day."

And they stay like that, fingers intertwined, eyes locked, until Natasha slowly breaks away, grabs the towels on the bed, and leaves the room

-X-br /

Aleksandra has taken a run, but cut it short when she remembers that she's yet to feed the horses and she wants to spend some time with the tractor.

It takes her approximately seven seconds to realize that there's someone in the barn.

She picks up the horse feed from the floor and then waits.

"I see the tractor is still broken," a voice says.

"Bubbles!" Aleksandra shouts turning around and hugging Nick.

"You're never going to stop calling me that, are you?" Nick asks.

"Not unless you stop looking like Cobra Bubbles," Aleksandra replies. She's called him Bubbles for as long as she can remember, and it has little to do with the fact that Lilo and Stitch was the first American kids' movie, and everything to do with the fact that she gave everyone in her life names that correlated with disney characters as a means of understanding human emotions.

Nick sighs.

Aleksandra pours the horse feed into the bucket. Donald Duck immediately waltzed toward the bucket and began to feed. Aleksandra runs a hand over Donald Duck's mane.

She pours feed into Dory's container and then turns back to face Nick, who is fiddling with the gears on the tractor.

"She hasn't run in like eight months, I honestly don't know why we just don't get rid of her," Aleksandra says.

"You oughta ask Stark to fix that," Nick says.

"Is this your way of using me to manipulate Mr. Stark into coming into the barn so that he can talk to you?" Aleksandra asks.

"Yes," Nick says.

"Nice, дедушка," Aleksandra says, referring to him with the Russian word for grandfather.

"Okay," Nick chuckles. "That's might be worse than Bubbles." But he's got a smile on his face and Aleksandra knows that he's (mostly) kidding.

-X-

The adults are in the kitchen and Aleksandra and Mikhail sit in the living room. Mikhail is reading something on his tablet and Aleksandra is working on her Chemistry homework.

Fragments of the adult's conversation drift into the living room, something about global destruction and Ultron's plan.

"Aleksandra?" says Misha.

"Yes?" Aleksandra answers.

Misha sets his tablet down. His fingers are shaking, but he signs his next phrase with perfect clarity. "Do you think that the world is going to end?" He asks.

"I don't know," she signs in return, shifting her palm to face Misha. "I really don't know."

-X-

Aleksandra is in her room on her keyboard when Natasha walks in. Natasha recognizes the opening of Expressions by Helen Jane Long before Aleksandra turns to face Natasha.

"Misha and I heard you talking about Ultron," Aleksandra says. She pauses for a long moment, picking at one of the many bracelets adorning her arms. "He thinks you're going to die," Aleksandra continues.

"And what do you think?" Natasha asks.

"I Honestly don't know ," Aleksandra admits. Her face falls for a moment, worry spreading across her features before she quickly covers it up with a fake smile. Aleksandra has gotten good at covering her emotions and Natasha can't even pretend not to know where that comes from. "Maybe that the whole world will end anyway and in the end, it doesn't even matter."

"I feel like that was a Linkin Park reference," Natasha says.

Aleksandra cracks a smile, an actual smile. "That, it was." Aleksandra's smile falters a big and she sighs before standing up and walking across the room to hug her mother. "Don't die, okay," she says. "Please don't die."

Natasha closes her eyes and hugs Aleksandra tightly. "Okay."

-X-

Misha sits quietly in his room, plucking Nanoblocks from the depths of his shaggy carpet.

His door opens and he looks up. It's his mom.

"Hey мышь," she says. "It's way past your bedtime."

Misha looks at his watch. It's 9:30. "Can I finish this part?" He asks, looking at his partially finished version of the Eiffel Tower.

"Bed," Natasha says firmly.

"And my shot," Misha adds, noting the tube in his mom's hand.

"And your shot," she repeats.

Misha carefully lifts up his version of the Eiffel Tower and then crawls to put it on his desk.

"It looks very nice," Natasha says. "Someday I'll have to take you to see the real deal."

"Thanks," Misha says. "Hopefully, I can finish it tomorrow." Misha scoots over to his bed and flops onto the mattress. He sets his glasses on the nightstand while Natasha opens his desk drawer and grabs individually wrapped alcohol wipes. Mikhail takes a wipe and cleans his own hands before he grabs another wipe and wipes off his thigh.

"Ready, мышь?" Natasha has donned gloves to prepare the needle.

"What element is derived from a Norse god?" He asks. He pauses as his mom presses the needle into his thigh. "Thorium," he replies as he flinches slightly.

"And we're done," his mom says. "And that was a pretty terrible joke."

Misha grins. "Well, I have to tell bad chemistry jokes because all the good ones Argon. Get it? Because Argon is an element and it's like saying all th egos jokes are gone."

Natasha smiles. "Yes, I get it. Alright, мышь," she says. "Enough comedy hour. Bed time."

"Are you leaving tonight?" Mikhail asks as he crawls under the covers.

"Yes," his mom says, gently stroking his hair.

Misha frowns. "Okay," he says, quietly because he's trying really really hard to not cry.

His mom sits down next to his bed.

"I'm sorry," Natasha apologizes. She feels like she's always apologizing to her kids and it's never enough.. "I know it's hard for you and your sister when I leave."

Misha shakes his head. "It isn't that," he says. "I just don't want you to die." And then he's crying.

"Oh мышь," his mom says. She strokes his hair, which usually makes Misha feel better, but he's just really upset right now. "I will come home; I promise," his mom says.

And Misha closes his eyes tight and he doesn't think about how his mom will always come home, even if she has to come home in a body bag, and that scares him a lot, a whole lot.

Natasha lies down next to him and wraps her arms around him. "It will be okay," she says, gently stroking his hair. Misha drifts off, the emotional exhaustion of sobbing and his mother's comforting presence lull him to sleep.

-X-

Natasha sighs as she strokes Misha's hair. Her eyes are wet with tears, and she wipes at them furiously to clear them.

"Goodnight," she mumbles, quietly kissing his forehead. Misha squirms slightly but does not wake. Natasha notices that Misha's hearing aids are still on, so she gently removes them from his ears. Misha moves a little bit, but he's always been a heavy sleeper, so he does not wake and instead curls himself together tightly.

He looks so calm and young, younger even than he looks when he's awake and alert. It almost hurts to see him like this, so innocent and childlike. She hates that one day her son is going to grow up to realize how cruel this world can be. She hates that he already knows too much about war. She hates that he's terrified that she's going to die.

She pauses in his room for a second, watching him sleeping, memorizing the picture of her son just in case it's the last time she sees him, and then she turns off his light and leaves the room.


End file.
